If you didn’t know, there has been controversy on the internet this week, imagine that! Once again, it centers on women and submission. Two opposing views on what it means to be male and female have collided. The fundamental issue at hand is something that permeates our churches, and needs to change.
The framework we currently have for our purity and sexuality discussions is flawed, cracked, and broken, and needs to be thrown out.
Under this framework:
Virginity is the highest priority. Once that is gone, it’s gone, and you are damaged goods (but only if you are a female). The next highest priority is remaining pure.
This assumes that sex ‘just happens’. Teenagers can’t plan for protection because that assumes they want it, and that violates the highest priority and is unacceptable!
The purity framework also assumes that men are trying so hard to be pure, but women are just too tempting. We are told that women have to cover-up, that modest is hottest, and if men sin, it’s because we sinned first.
The purity framework ignores the female desire for sex. We are told that only men are visual (not true).
We hear in sermon after sermon, book after book, that men are visual, and women are creating temptations, and why can’t we just stop? We are feeding the male’s sinful desire.
Because, apparently, wanting sex is sinful.
Because apparantly, men are just walking around, and every time they see an inch of skin, they immediately think about screwing it!
Instead of focusing on ‘temptation’ and those sinful, flaunting women who make it so hard for them, how about we talk about why they are tempted? What needs they are trying to meet through porn? Why don’t we talk about women being image-bearers and not a rack?
Because if we talk about the fact that women are visual, that men are actually trying to meet their emotional needs through porn, that women want and enjoy sex and that some people have sex outside of marriage responsibly – then all of a sudden we are on equal ground.
And that is not allowed!
This is why I think all of this is futile.
We have to change the fundamentals of the conversation. The sex and purity discussion in the church has got to be approached in a different, healthier way.
Women have to claim our God given right to equality.
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
We have to stand up and stop accepting blame for sin that is not ours.
We don’t appreciate hearing sermons on James 1:14, blaming women for men’s temptation that leads to sin.
We have to stop going along with the narrative that says women have to submit in everything .
Women do not just receive, surrender, and accept.
Changing the framework treats women as equal, makes rape no longer funny. It would take away the stigma of rape because the responsibility would be put on the man.
Changing the foundations of the discussion means we start telling each other, our daughters, that you do not always have to submit. That there are some instances when you need to stand up to men and fight back and assert yourself and that it is OK.
It is not a sin to try and resist a man.
When your framework is based on authority and submission, then it ends up being about obedience. Who is holding their authority rightly, who is submitting well enough? Are you obeying God enough, in the right way?
And when the focus is obedience, the lack of obedience is sin. So then the failure to submit, the failure to be ‘appropriately feminine’ is sin.
When failures are couched in sin, and when people fundamentally believe this, and have this as a primary foundation of their faith, it is very hard to be empathetic with people who are in pain.
This is why I have never heard the term ‘trigger warning’ in church, or in any conversation with people outside the internet. Because churches won’t, can’t take on heavy subjects like this because in order to do so, they would have to change their framework. That is why sermons will give out ‘content warnings’ for kids, but not for victims. Because purity of mind, soul, and body is the highest priority.
When everything is couched in sin, then you have disobedient people who give in to temptation, and therefore you have temptresses. Which leads to the unconscious thought process of, Why should we be empathetic with people who are obviously just out to tempt and entice? This turns all women into prostitutes who are undeserving of respect and empathy.
For someone to acknowledge that what they said is deeply harmful, offensive, and brings up horrible memories, is to admit that the issue is bigger than authority and submission.
That there is more going on than sin and temptations. That not all issues can be reduced to ‘our sin nature’. To adequately address the issue of sexuality means to openly talk about the fact that we all have needs, wants, desires, and we try and meet them in a variety of ways, healthy and unhealthy. To talk about what it means to be female and sexy means to honestly move the discussion past ‘biblical manhood and womanhood’.
The framework we currently have for our purity and sexuality needs to be changed to one of honesty, empathy, and equality.
I appreciate this very much. I especially resonate with the need for empathy. That’s something I’ve had to learn more recently in life. This is convicting, but very much welcome.
Blessings.
This brought me to tears, Caris. Thank you so much for the fire and compassion in your words. I agree — this is not just about words meaning things, or complementarianism or egalitarianism, or even patriarchy. This is about women not being perceived as fully human despite being co-heirs in Christ and made in the image of God.
oh yay, mission accomplished, haha. I’m glad it spoke to you….this topic gets me so upset, I can’t even focus when I try to write it out. I was worried it was just a rant that didn’t make sense.
um, yes. I used to brag that empathy was not my spiritual gift. I definitely had a lot of learning to do there – still do! That’s one nice thing about going through pain – there are lessons to be learned!!!
I agree with you Caris. We need a paradigm shift in how we view both women and men. Unfortunately women bear the most negative effects of our current paradigm, for which I am truly sorry. We need to recognize and affirm women as equal divine image bearers and from that reorient or more likely radically change our whole perception of women and their place in the world. And we men need to own up to our own issues rather than always foisting the blame on the women of the world.
I am appalled by what was written that started this current conversation. I wish I could say that those men don’t represent us men, but I fear they represent far too many of us. But please know that they don’t represent all of us.
Yes! So beautifully put. Funny, too, how we never seem to remember that blaming the woman is something God didn’t tolerate the first time it happened. The way things are isn’t how God intended, but how we ended up as a result of our own foolishness. It would make more sense if, as our model of how to live, we went back to the beginning instead of the mess we made of it.
Caris,
once again, i’m ignited by your words. I agree – i do. I am a woman who lived in an image-based man’s world who sought to be desired by men (pathetically) while touting the power of feminism. I think we could talk a long time as I am one who’s lived through (perhaps) more of a wretched kind of life. My only comment right now is that as women, I believe we are called to only submit to our husbands. And that assumes that our husbands are biblical and strong and committed to sacrificial love. We don’t submit to MEN … we submit to our husbands. I have a son (20) who regrets his sexual decisions. I regret mine. My husband regrets his. None of us blame anyone else for our decisions. But we do believe in the beauty of sex in it’s most thrilling sacred life-long context. Honorable. We need to teach.
-s
” blaming the woman is something God didn’t tolerate the first time” oooh I never thought of that! I like it!!
Oh Suzy, that sounds like a painful story 🙁 I’m sorry. Did you see this article a few months ago? http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/relationship/features/27577-women-stop-submitting-to-men It’s making the same point, which is a pretty good one. I’m for mutual submission in marriage, but I had never thought about the fact that so often we do view it as submitting to men instead of just in marriage. I have an 11 yo daughter and a 9 yo son, and now that they are getting to that age, it’s starting to hit both of us that we have to figure out some way to teach them differently from how we learned and how culture continues to teach them. It’s kind of intimidating.
There’s a lot of content here and I have to think about a lot of it. Not that I am disagreeing. In fact the only piece that I kind of differed was the phrase “that men are actually trying to meet their emotional needs through porn”. I actually believe that men AND women are meeting their sexual needs through porn so they don’t have to put the emotional efforts into relationships with the opposite sex. If you can detach your emotions from your sexual self, you can get the release you physically need without having to invest anything. But that really doesn’t argue your point here. I do think that porn is a distructive force that hurts more than helps. But dare I say something really non fundamental? That maybe if we didn’t take such a hard line against masturbation that we wouldn’t have teens straining at the leashes of their hormones? I’m NOT suggesting that we teach this in youth group. It’s just a thought that came to me as I was reading. See you have me all discombobulated!
Ha! That last point is something the hubs and I were talking about the other night. If it’s simply a biological/chemical reaction that happens as a teen, can we differentiate between that and actual lust? I’m starting to think that maybe we should be separating the issue out more between teens and adults.
Wow there are a lot of really good ideas in here, that no one ever talks about in church- women’s desire for sex, the idea that wanting sex is sinful, the unhealthy emphasis on virginity (and being “damaged goods”), etc.
I know I definitely have a lot of messed-up ideas about purity and dating, etc, and I’m working on addressing that and trying to figure it out. Actually this week I plan to blog about “modesty.”
oh I’ll be interested to read that! It’s so hard trying to untangle all the unhealthy ideas I’ve been taught, trying to find the good in it!
Yeah exactly. ^_^ Here is what I posted today on my blog: “Modesty as she is taught.” http://tellmewhytheworldisweird.blogspot.com/2012/07/modesty-as-she-is-taught.html
(part 2 will be posted on Friday)
Some other posts I wrote: “‘You Never Marry the Right Person’ article” about the idea that God is totally creating this one perfect soul-mate for you http://tellmewhytheworldisweird.blogspot.com/2012/07/you-never-marry-right-person-article.html
“Follow God and Snag a Guy” http://tellmewhytheworldisweird.blogspot.com/2012/07/follow-god-and-snag-guy.html